The Shot in the Dark
by Oliviet
Summary: She feels it the instant it happens; the cold, hard metal piercing her chest. She stumbles backwards inevitably falling to the ground as she feels the liquid filling her lungs. The blood. Her blood. She tries to move, to search the area for Booth. Did he get him too? But the effort to breathe is too much. She's dying.
1. Chapter 1

She feels it the instant it happens; the cold, hard metal piercing her chest. She stumbles backwards inevitably falling to the ground as she feels the liquid filling her lungs. The blood. _Her blood._ She tries to move, to search the area for Booth. _Did he get him too?_ But the effort to breathe is too much. She's dying.

"Bones!"

His voice is distant. He seems miles away. Suddenly she feels pressure on her chest wound, watches through hazy eyes as her blood seeps through Booth's hands.

"Don't you dare die on me!"

Her head spins. She's losing oxygen to her brain.

"Bones, please, I love you. I need you. Stay with me, Bones. Please."

He pushes harder on her chest as though he thinks that will help save her, but from her perspective, it just looks like even more blood came seeping out. She wants to tell him goodbye. Tell him something to tell their daughter. But all she can do is gasp for breath.

"Damnit, Bones, please!"

She can hear the sirens wailing in the distance. They're not going to make it in time. There's no chance left for her. She never imagined that she'd die like this: bleeding to death from a GSW to the chest as the man she loved, the father of her child, pleaded with her to stay with him on the floor of an abandoned warehouse. No, the thought of dying in foster care had always been much more plausible than this.

Booth says something else, but she can no longer make out what he's saying. Her eyes grow too heavy and they fall shut, plunging the world into the darkness, to never see the light of day again. It's over.

* * *

Brennan bolts upright in bed, hand flying to her chest as she tries to get her breathing under control. She looks around the room and finds Booth peacefully sleeping at her side. The more nights they've spent together, the more accustomed he's gotten to sleeping through her nightmares. She shakes her head, almost as though she's chastising herself. Third time this week she's had that nightmare.

She carefully shifts out of bed so as not to disturb Booth, and shuffles into the bathroom. Brennan splashes cold water on her face, trying to once again shake the feeling of being devoid of life. She needs to stop letting this get to her, but it's impossible with everything that's happened. Pelant was inside of Angela and Hodgins' house. And she _knows_ that he's been inside of theirs. There's really nothing stopping him from massacring them all.

Except that he doesn't. He likes the game too much. He likes screwing with her too much. But even though she'd told Booth yesterday that Pelant didn't want to kill her, she barely believed it herself. Deep down she knows that the only thing he wants is her dead. This game he's playing is just a…decoy of some sort. His real goal is to take out is intellectual counterpart. But if she's being honest with herself, he's a lot smarter than she is.

Brennan grips both sides of the sink as she stares into her reflection in the mirror. She barely recognizes herself. When did she get so…old? The dark circles permanently etched under her eyes, the worry lines strewn about her face. Surely being the mother of a one-year-old didn't do this alone; the constant threat of death hanging over her head had to be another factor. Didn't it?

She runs her hands through her hair before pulling it up in a hair tie she grabs from the medicine cabinet. She makes it a high pony like those ridiculous ones she used to wear when she first started working with Booth. Somehow, she thinks the look makes her look younger. It sheds the years of wear and tear that have built up ever since the FBI took her away from her old remains. As she pulls the hair tie back out and returns to bed, she can't help but wonder if Angela was right. Maybe it's time to get back to her real passion and leave all of the freshly dead bodies behind.

* * *

She can barely focus at work the next day. Her head is too overrun with thoughts. Brennan mindlessly rubs at her chest, as the rest of her team works through the puzzle in front of them. She snaps back into focus as Hodgins starts reading letters off of the screen.

"But what do they mean?"

She feels all three sets of eyes turn to her in question. She stares at them blankly giving a small shrug, having missed the better part of that conversation.

"Sweetie, are you okay?" Angela asks.

"I'm fine," Brennan replies.

"Does your chest hurt or something?"

She suddenly becomes aware of her hand resting over her heart.

"Oh," she starts, dropping her hand. "No. It's nothing. I'll get some Post-Its so we can write the letters down and try to decode them."

Angela, thankfully, lets it slide and Brennan silently promises herself that she'll focus for the rest of the day.

* * *

She's running. She's out in the middle of nowhere and she's running. The grass is tall and brushes just under her knees. Maybe she can hide in it. Hide from _him_. She looks back over her shoulder to see if he's coming and trips over a tree root in the process, falling flat on her stomach. She stays still, inhaling the earthy scent of the dirt. And then she laughs because Hodgins always hates when she calls it dirt.

But she shouldn't have done that. She shouldn't have made that sound. Because now she can feel the barrel of the gun pressed into her back, hear him breathing in her ear.

"Now, Dr. Brennan, what ever am I going to do with you?"

She squirms beneath him having flashbacks to a certain foster parent she'd rather forget than remember. Pelant pushes her head into the ground and she tastes the cooper of blood as she bites her lip on accident.

"I think you know as well as I do, how this is all going to work out. When I'm done, there won't be any of you left. And I could kill your precious babies too, that part wouldn't be hard, but just think about all the fun of foster care they'd be missing out on."

"You bastard," she groans out between her teeth.

He clucks his tongue at her. "Name calling is going to get you killed so much faster."

Brennan runs through every martial arts move in her head trying to figure out which one will get her out of this situation. Just as she decides on one, the gun goes off and everything goes black.

* * *

This time when she wakes, she's in hysterics. The sobs violently wreck her chest as she tries to get air into her lungs. Booth strolls back in from either the bathroom or from checking on Christine, but stops when he sees her sitting bolt upright in bed. He's looking at her like she's possessed.

"Bones, what's wrong?" he asks gently, sliding back into bed and placing a tentative hand on her back.

"He's going to kill us. All of us. And he's not going to stop until every last member of our team is dead. And there's absolutely nothing that we can do!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hey," he shushes her, pulling her into his arms. "That's not true."

"Isn't it? You shot him today and he still got away. The man's indestructible!"

"Maybe, but so are we. Think about many times we've almost died."

She sniffles, wiping at her nose with the back of her shirt sleeve.

"That was before we had a daughter who has the potential to go into foster care."

"No. No, that's not going to happen to her. We have your dad or Russ or hell even Jared. Or there's that crazy Benjamin Franklin quoting cousin of yours. Christine's not going to end up in the system like you did."

"He's smart. He could take all of them out too and they wouldn't even see it coming."

"How would he even know that they existed?"

"I don't know maybe he bugged our place."

"Now you're just being paranoid."

"Am I?" she spins in his grip, glaring at him, her teary eyes even bluer in the moonlight. "Every night this week I've had nightmares about him murdering me. My life has become a constant string of nightmares. I honestly can't remember the last time I actually slept through the night. If it's not Gormogon, it's the Grave Digger or Epps or Broadsky and now Pelant. It never ends and I'm sick of it. All I want to do is go back to Africa and dig up some old bones that have nothing to do with serial killers. I don't want to do this anymore, Booth. I can't."

Her vision blurs with tears as she starts crying harder. Booth pulls her up tight against his chest, his left hand stroking her back as he places kisses onto her hairline.

"I saved you from everyone else and I'm going to save you from him too."

"Don't make promises you can't keep," she whispers.

He grunts at that, fisting his left hand into her hair. He rests his chin on top of her head.

"Did we wait too long to be together?" he asks softly after several minutes of silence.

"Yes," comes her timid reply, her hands fisting in his shirt.

"I'm sorry, Bones. I'm so, so sorry."

* * *

This time when she gets shot, she's not in some abandoned warehouse or outside in a random field. She's in her office, working late. This time she doesn't see his face or hear his voice, but she still has a feeling that it was him. This time she sees her mother materializing in front of her. This time…it wasn't a dream.


	2. Chapter 2

She's in and out of consciousness for the next couple of hours. At least it feels like hours, she really has no idea how long it's been. She recalls being taken to surgery at some point, although she has no recollection of how she got to the hospital. She can remember Booth crying at her bedside and him talking to Angela in hushed tones.

When she finally does wake, the first thing she becomes aware of is the sharp pain in her chest. It starts off as just a twinge, but it radiates the more she comes to. Her eyes struggle to open as she fights against the feeling of there recently being bullets wedged into her heart.

"Fuck," she curses, moving her right hand to rub at her stitches.

Booth stirs in his chair next to her, but doesn't wake up. Brennan can't figure out how he fell asleep in that position; it looks very uncomfortable. Her hand gropes at the bed searching for the button to call the nurse. She needs something for this pain.

A petite blonde in baby pink scrubs rushes in and smiles when she sees that Brennan is awake.

"Dr. Brennan! I'm so glad to see that you're back with us."

Booth startles at that, sitting up and looking towards her.

"Bones!"

"I'll go get Dr. Franck," the nurse tells her, spinning on her heel to leave.

"No, but wait," Brennan calls after her, desperate for some form of pain medication. She eyes the morphine drip at her bedside…some stronger form of pain medication. But the nurse is already gone and she falls back onto her pillow with a huff.

"How are you?" Booth asks, taking her hand in his.

"My chest hurts," she grumbles, staring at the drip and suddenly wishing that her doctorate didn't have a Ph in front of it.

"Yeah I remember that hurting like hell."

She turns her head to look at him, mind filling with flashbacks of his blood on her hands and the feeling of her world spiraling out of control as the doctors told her that he was dead.

"How long have I been out?" she asks, softly.

"Almost a week."

She's taken aback by that answer. It certainly didn't feel that long at all. Hours, it felt like hours, not days.

"Do we know who did it?"

Booth shakes his head, a grim expression clouding his face. "We're assuming it's Pelant. There's no evidence, but…the bastard is good."

She sighs and then cringes as the act irritates her chest even more. Thankfully Dr. Franck and the pink nurse come back and check on her vitals. He increases her morphine drip and within a few minutes she can feel the relief blossoming through her chest. He continues to stand there and explain the rehab that she'll have to go through to get everything back in working order. She only half listens as her thoughts are now drifting off with the desire to hold Christine.

* * *

She sits on the window seat in their living room with Christine balanced on her lap, watching as the rain pours down and bounces off of the sidewalk. It's February and it should be snowing, but they've had a pretty mild winter this year. She finds herself wishing that this was a thunderstorm, the thunder and lightning would match her mood in a way that this simple downpour can not.

Christine wriggles in her lap, wrapping her tiny fist around the pendant on Brennan's necklace. She takes it off and hands it to her before the child has a chance to hit her stitches.

"Just don't put it in your mouth," Brennan warns, looking back out the window.

But sure enough, the child does. She sighs, knowing that she should have known better. Christine's back molars are coming in after all. Apologizing, she takes the necklace away from her and tucks it behind her back. Of course this causes her daughter to start crying. Brennan rubs her back in an attempt to calm her down, still staring out the window.

She can't help but think that he's still out there. A free man who has killed so many people; who has tried to kill her. It makes her skin crawl.

* * *

She hates going to rehab. It feels like a waste of her time, but she knows she needs to do it. She knows that if she ever wants to go for a run with Booth again come springtime, she needs to get her cardio levels back up. But there are so many other things she needs to be doing right now that "working out" hardly seems worth it.

Brennan stands in the shower washing the sweat away from today's session and letting the steam relieve some of the tension from her muscles. When she steps out she finds herself staring at her chest in the mirror. She traces her scar with her index finger mindlessly until the steam starts to dissipate from the room and goosebumps begin to rise up on her skin.

Booth comes into the bathroom and catches her still staring at her naked reflection. His eyes catch hers in the mirror. Wordlessly he lifts his T-shirt off over his head and her eyes instantly dart to his scar. It's barely visible anymore, but she knows it's there. She turns to him, reaching out to brush the pad of her thumb over it. A soft sob escapes her lips as he reaches out to do the same to hers. She falls into his arms, crying about her shooting for the first time since it's happened. He holds her close with one arm while reaching out to grab a towel with the other to drape around her shivering shoulders.

"You don't have to go through this alone, Bones," he whispers into her hair. "I've been there."

She breathes in the scent of his skin, letting it calm her down. She kisses his scar and then looks up into his eyes.

"I'm still so scared," she confesses. "All of the time. He's still out there and I'm still alive. I feel like a sitting duck just waiting for him to strike again."

"Hey, we caught the person who shot me; we'll catch him too –"

"Because I killed her," Brennan said bluntly, stepping out of his embrace and searching the floor for her robe. "Nobody caught her; I killed her. I killed her because she was trying to kill me because she was in love with you and I was supposedly in her way."

Brennan slips into her robe, letting it warm her body back up. "A serial killer having me on his hit list is not the same thing as an insane stalker. I'm not safe until he's dead."

"But, Bones, if we lock him up –"

"It won't matter. He could escape."

"From a maximum security prison? I don't think so."

She places her hands on his bare chest, fingers skimming around the outline of his pectoral muscles.

"I'm going to have to side with Angela and Hodgins on this one, Booth. I want him dead."

* * *

She sneaks up behind him, jabbing the barrel of her gun into his temple.

"How does the hunter feel to become the hunted?" she growls.

"Oh very good, Dr. Brennan. You've found me. That's going to make things so much easier."

"Don't you realize that all I have to do is pull this trigger and you'd be dead in an instant?"

"I do. So why haven't you done it yet? Why did you feel the need to announce your presence?"

"Because I wanted you to know who killed you. I wanted you to realize who the real genius was all along. But most of all, I wanted you to know that you didn't win."

"You know what I think? I think you're afraid to kill me. You're afraid to tarnish your perfect little record."

"I hate to be the one to break it you, Pelant, but I've killed before. You're just another dirtbag to add to my list."

She pulls the trigger.

* * *

When she wakes, she's disoriented until she realizes that she's fallen asleep at her desk. Her dreams of Pelant killing her have morphed into dreams of her killing him. She rolls her head on her neck, trying to work out the kinks. She jumps when she notices a form sitting on her couch in the dark, the only light in her office is coming from her desk light. But then she realizes it's only Booth and instantly relaxes.

"Why didn't you wake me up?" Brennan complains, standing up. She groans as her back cracks in the process.

"You looked peaceful," Booth shrugged.

"Were you really going to let me sleep there all night?"

"No, I knew that you'd have a nightmare and wake yourself up."

She glares at him, crossing her arms over her chest.

"I'm just being honest."

Brennan moves to turn on the overhead lights before she begins to pack up her office for the weekend.

"How long have you been sitting there in the dark?"

"Oh, not that long."

She nods, shoving papers into folders and placing them in her bag. "Have you heard from the PI at all?"

"Yep," Booth nods, standing up and moving to her desk. "He found him."

She stills, slowly dragging her eyes up to meet his. "So what are we going to do about it?"

He grips her hand and squeezes. His eyes are already telling her everything she needs to know. Pelant is finally dead.

* * *

AN: This was only going to be a one shot, but I thought (as did several of you) it needed a second chapter.


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